"What's Up, Doc?"

By Jerry Zezima

An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but it won’t keep me away from the doctor.

That’s because I have reached an age — the big 7-Oh — where medical appointments have become a major part of my life.

I have been making so many trips to see one doctor or another that I should win an award from the American Medical Association and get free health care until I am dead, which at this rate will happen either next month, because the frenetic pace will kill me, or when I am as old as my mother, Rosina, who is almost 100 and sees fewer doctors than I do.

“I guess they’ve given up on me,” Mom said. “When you’re over the hill, you don’t have to go to the doctor so often.”

“I’ve been going downhill for years,” I replied, “and I still have more appointments than anyone I know.”

That includes my wife, Sue, who has a bunch of doctors.

“Sometimes I forget which one I’m supposed to see,” she said.

It also goes for other relatives, like my sister Susan, and friends who are my age.

“My calendar is filled with doctor’s appointments,” Susan said.

“I’m always going to the doctor,” said my buddy Hank.

“I see more doctors than you can shake a stick at,” my pal Tim told me.

Of course, if you shook a stick at the doctor and got hurt, you’d have to see — you guessed it! — the doctor.

“Doctor’s appointments seem to be my social life now,” said my friend Sandie.

They have made my life like a storyline on “General Hospital.”

Recently I went to the urologist, who got to the bottom of the situation.

“When you reach 70, you have to keep up on your health,” he said, adding that I am, in his area of expertise, healthy.

After that, I had a crazy week that featured a heart calcium score on Monday morning and a visit with my dermatologist in the afternoon. The next day I went to the dentist. On Thursday, I had bloodwork.

The heart calcium score and the bloodwork were ordered by my cardiologist, who had previously made me go for a stress test.

The results of the heart calcium score and the bloodwork would also be sent to my primary care physician, whom I had seen recently.

The heart calcium score was taken at an imaging center, where I hoped to project an image of good health.

“Do you get a lot of geezers?” I asked Rachel, the radiologist, who smiled and diplomatically said I’m not old but that she does see a lot of people my age.

“I hope I have a winning score,” I said after going through the machine, which took images of my heart to see if I have plaque. “It’s better to have plaque on your teeth than in your heart,” I added.

Later that day, my dermatologist, who had skin in the game, said he was happy to be on my medical mystery tour.

“You might need a secretary to help you keep track of everything,” he said.

The next morning, at the dentist’s office, I had my teeth cleaned by Margaret, the hygienist, who said I didn’t have much plaque.

When I told her about my busy week, she said, “Going to all those doctors is like a full-time job.”

Maria, the phlebotomist who drew my blood, said she sees plenty of people my age every day.

“It’s like a social club,” she told me. “If you’re over 50, forget it. You’re always going to the doctor. And you can’t remember which one you have to see next.”

“Maybe if I live to be 100,” I said, echoing my mother, “I won’t have to go to the doctor so often.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"Not the Brightest Bulb on the Circuit"

By Jerry Zezima

How many newspaper columnists does it take to change a lightbulb? If the columnist is yours truly, the answer is zero.

That’s why, after proving to be too dim to perform this simple task, I gave up and called Kevin the Electrician.

Kevin had been over recently to help install our new central air-conditioning system.

“It’s 130 degrees in your attic,” he said after working up there to put in a fan needed to cool down the AC so it could work without overheating.

“You worked without overheating,” I told Kevin, who had to go through the roof — literally — to do the job.

“I was sweating because I’m afraid of heights,” he confessed.

“Me, too,” I said. “I used to go up on the roof to clean the gutters. I figured that’s where I would end up. But I finally wised up and got gutter guards.”

“You have to remember not to look down,” said Kevin, adding that he once did a job in the attic of a house where he found two large bags of money.

“How much was in them?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “But the bags must have belonged to a little girl because the writing on them said, ‘Susie.’ I guess they were left behind by the family that sold the house. I told the woman who had just bought it that she should contact the sellers to return the money to the little girl, but the woman said, ‘No, the money is mine now.’ And she had a maid, so she wasn’t poor. I believe in karma, so I hope she loses a lot of money someday.”

“Then she couldn’t afford to pay you,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kevin replied. “I’m never going back there.”

The worst customers, he said, are the do-it-yourselfers who think they know what they’re doing.

“It must come as a shock when they realize they don’t,” I remarked.

“That’s when they call me,” said Kevin, who has been zapped a couple of times himself.

He once got hit with 180 volts on his pinkie, which is still scarred.

“The big one,” said Kevin, who’s 63 and has been in the business for 41 years, “was when I got hit with 480 volts. My blood was boiling. I thought, ‘This is the end.’ The doctors were amazed that I survived. They said, ‘That’s the guy who almost fried himself.’ ”

Another time, he almost knocked himself out when he was hit in the head by the whirling blade of a ceiling fan.

“I turned the fan off and told the homeowner not to turn it on,” Kevin recalled. “Out of habit, she did. I turned around and got hit right in the temple. I was seeing stars.”

“That almost happened to me when I tried to change a lightbulb in the kitchen the other night,” I said.

“Didn’t you turn off the fan?” he asked.

“I forgot,” I replied weakly.

“What happened with the bulb?” Kevin wondered.

“I took the old one out and put the new one in, but it didn’t go on,” I said. “When I was unscrewing the new bulb, it went on. I screwed it in again, but it went off.”

Kevin gave the bulb a twist. It went on.

“You’re using a 2800 kelvin LED bulb,” he said.

“Kelvin? I thought you were Kevin,” I said.

“It’s a different color than the other bulbs,” he continued.

“This is why you get paid the big bucks,” I said, even though Kevin’s rates are very reasonable and I don’t have bags of money in my attic.

“Next time you have trouble changing a lightbulb, call me,” he said. “And make sure you turn the fan off.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"Jurassic Grandpa"

By Jerry Zezima

My 7-year-old grandson wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up. I, his 70-year-old grandfather, have given him a head start because, let’s face it, I’m a fossil.

And I know a lot about prehistoric life. That’s why I should be a tour guide at my grandson’s favorite place, the Museum of Natural History, which he likes to call the Dinosaur Museum.

We went there recently because my grandson had made a startling discovery — what appeared to be a fossilized crab, which he found in a field at his school.

“It looks like a trilobite,” I said.

I knew this because when I was my grandson’s age, I was a fan of prehistoric animals, too.

“My favorite is T. rex,” my grandson said. “Its name means ‘King of the Tyrant Lizards.’ It lived in the Cretaceous Period.”

“I’m G. rex,” I said. “My name means ‘King of the Geezers.’ I’m from the Boomer Period.”

“When was that?” my grandson asked.

“Back when Buick Skylarks roamed the earth,” I told him.

My grandson said he also likes triceratops because it had impressive horns.

“It must have played the tuba,” I guessed.

My grandson rolled his eyes and said that stegosaurus had plates on its back.

“How did it eat dinner?” I wondered.

“You’re silly, Poppie,” my grandson said, adding that stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut.

“I think I have something in common with that dinosaur,” I said.

My grandson sighed and told me that the largest dinosaur was brachiosaurus.

“Brontosaurus was big, too,” I said. “But it had to change its name to Apatosaurus.”

“Why?” my grandson inquired.

“Because,” I said, “another dinosaur stole its identity.”

This was the kind of priceless information you couldn’t get from just any tour guide at the Dinosaur Museum, which we visited that afternoon.

Our first stop was an exhibit featuring small creatures from the Paleozoic Era, which began 538 million years ago.

“There it is!” my grandson exclaimed, pointing to a rock containing the exoskeleton of a trilobite.

“It looks like the one you found,” I said.

“You’re right, Poppie,” he said. “How did you know?”

“I’m old,” I answered.

We also saw the massive skeleton of a brachiosaurus, which stood next to a shorter, thinner but still gigantic relative.

“I bet that’s diplodocus,” I said.

“It is,” my grandson confirmed after reading the sign. “You know a lot.”

“I’m an encyclopedia of useless information,” I proclaimed proudly.

My grandson, who loves armadillos, spotted the reconstructed remains of a huge ancestor in the prehistoric mammal section.

“Glyptodon,” I said. “It was as big as a Volkswagen Beetle, but it didn’t have 4-speed manual transmission.”

I showed my grandson the skeleton of megatherium, a giant ground sloth.

“It was slow and lazy,” I noted. “Kind of like me, except I don’t have a tail.”

We saw lots of other neat stuff before heading to the gift shop, where my grandson got a junior paleontology kit with a tiny stegosaurus inside.

“It must be a baby,” I said.

“That’s not a real dinosaur,” my grandson informed me.

He proved it when we got back to his house, where he opened the kit and went to work, using a hammer and chisel to chip away at a block of hard plaster containing a fake skeleton.

In no time, he had uncovered several ribs and a hip bone.

“Just like a paleontologist,” I told him.

“That’s what I want to be when I grow up,” my grandson said.

“You could put your discoveries in the Dinosaur Museum,” I said. “In fact, you could run the place. And if you let me tell silly jokes, I could be a tour guide.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima